


Choose to Stand

by scioscribe



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Concussions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25152040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Loki takes a blow to the head during the battle against Hela. It's nothing. Really.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 334





	Choose to Stand

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to Snickfic for reminding me of this, originally posted for a prompt on "hiding an injury."

It would fade soon, Loki was sure of it. It hardly even qualified as a wound. He counted himself lucky that the blow had come from a boot and not a sword; it was only in the confusion of battle that you could find yourself stabbing people with your helmet (he had always told Thor those horns would prove useful) and getting kicked in the head. This was why he never fought fairly if he could avoid it.  
  
He had been down on one knee and then all of a sudden he’d been knocked sideways, half across the bridge, with one of Hela’s resurrected warriors bearing down on him with an inarticulate roar. The same one who had just rung his head like a bell? Perhaps, so Loki had sent him back to Valhalla with particular venomous pleasure. And he had continued the melee—let no one say he had not shed his enemies’ blood for Asgard. Let the histories show that Loki of Asgard, ever-flexible, had provided fight as well as flight. His head still pounding, he had orchestrated Thor’s somber coronation, had rigged the lights on the bridge to briefly flash red and gold. He had done all that. And he was not going to miss a single fucking council meeting.  
  
The hurt was small. It would pass.  
  
Leaning against the wall of his room, his forehead against the cool steel, he breathed in and out, refusing to look down at the basin into which he had just gagged up what little he’d had of breakfast. His stomach had been fickle, too, and that was both more bearable than the headache and more inconvenient, because it required a little privacy. And privacy was a hard thing to come by just lately.  
  
He wiped sweat off his face, rinsed away the evidence, and steeled himself for another meeting. Nothing like sitting through endless droning and granular analyses of food stores and water impurities to make one more chipper and alert.  
  
“I don’t know we aren’t just taking the shortest course, if it’s safe,” Bruce was saying.  
  
“Because the shortest possible course,” Thor said, with a tone that implied he believed he had explained this already, “is through unpopulated space, and if misfortune befalls us there, as well it might, with a strange ship that was hardly designed to support this size of population, we will all die cold and alone.”  
  
“You don’t have to end every explanation with ‘we’ll all die cold and alone,’” Bruce said.  
  
“He does if it’s true,” Valkyrie said. “And it is.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll buy that, but he also used that as a reason I couldn’t have some more of that peanut-butter-ish stuff yesterday instead of that weird green gloop you guys were serving for lunch.”  
  
“Nutrients,” Loki said.  
  
Bruce looked over at him. “What?”  
  
Why had he even interjected? He could barely follow the argument. “The salad yesterday had a concentrated quantity of nutrients.”  
  
“That was supposed to be a salad?”  
  
“In a manner of speaking.” He paused. “Jelly. Jelly salad, salad jelly. Anyway, we all do die alone, brother, so it’s not much ammunition for your stance one way or the other. What—what were we talking about?”  
  
“The flight plan,” Valkyrie said, looking at him curiously. “Have you got another headache?”  
  
He rued thinking she would have painkillers on her and hand them over without asking too many questions; she had, he’d not been wrong, but she had also not forgotten about it and he had felt her attention on him ever since, hawk-like and sharp. He controlled his voice carefully. “A bit.”  
  
Thor looked up from the star-chart. “You’ve been getting headaches?”  
  
“Everyone gets headaches,” Loki said. “If you wish to cure me, issue a royal command that people stop being irritating.”  
  
“Done,” Thor said cheerfully.  
  
Loki forced a smile. “Thank you, I feel better already.” At the patent lie of this, another wave of nausea hit him. “Excuse me just a moment.” He started to stand and—fuck—swayed so much he had to catch himself on the edge of the table. He stood there holding onto the table and breathing unevenly until someone—Heimdall, he realized—eased him back down into his chair. Humiliating. Loki closed his eyes. He wanted to point out that he had actually been doing very well until the dizziness had pounced on him so unfairly. He was actually doing quite well.  
  
“Dammit, Loki,” Thor said, his voice suddenly close, his hands suddenly on Loki’s knees. “You’re ill.”  
  
“He’s not,” Valkyrie said. “He’s hurt. When did you take a knock to the head, Loki?”  
  
Her calling him by his actual name was still rare enough that he opened his eyes. He then immediately wished he hadn’t—they were all swarmed tight around him. He might as well be chained up again. “In the battle.”  
  
“The battle that was a fortnight ago?” Heimdall said, in a dangerously level tone; it was probably some insult to his professional acumen not to have glimpsed the wound sooner. “Or have you had some other bout I’ve not seen?”  
  
“The battle a fortnight ago, yes. People don’t actually go around kicking me in the head as a matter of course.”  
  
“Which is honestly a little surprising,” Bruce said. “I’m going to look at your eyes, okay?” He held Loki’s eyelids open on either side. “Your left pupil’s a little wide. Headache, dizzy spells, confusion… pretty clear-cut concussion. Have you been throwing up?”  
  
“This is undignified.”  
  
“So yes. Have you passed out at all?”  
  
“No. It’s nothing. It will go away on its own.”  
  
“Yeah, it will, and it’ll go away on its own a lot faster, and make you a lot less miserable in the process, if you just chill out in bed for a while.” He patted Loki awkwardly on the shoulder and then grinned, pleased with himself. “Hey, look, you’re an actual solvable problem I can fix with Earth knowledge, that’s kind of fun. I mean, fix as far as the concussion goes, anyway, not as far as your whole… general crazy murder thing is concerned.”  
  
“If you’ll all give us a moment,” Thor said, half in a growl, and he dragged Loki out in the hall and down the length of it until they were at Loki’s room, where he shoved him in, followed behind him, and stood guarding the door as if Loki intended to flee. “Now sit down before you fall down. What could you possibly have been thinking?”  
  
Loki sat. “About what?”  
  
“What do you mean, ‘about what?’ About needlessly aggravating your condition by hiding it from me until you were at the point of collapse. Did you think I was asking about the salad? Which really was awful, by the way.”  
  
“I don’t coordinate the menu,” Loki said, pressing his palm to his forehead. “Besides, if I can’t keep anything down, I don’t know why the rest of you should, so if I nudged the cook in any particular direction…” He sighed. “It’s a battle wound, Thor, and a minor one. It’s something of a weakness until it’s healed, yes, but I will not be shoved aside or lose my place because of it. I have claimed a role and I intend to hold it.”  
  
“You have claimed no more than what is due to you,” Thor said, his voice soft now. “You only ever lost it by casting it aside. Loki, you can take the time to mend without finding yourself ousted from my council, and you will never lose your place at my side, if you choose to stand there. _If you are not prevented by your own stubbornness from standing up at all_. I have seen you die twice now, brother, do you think I enjoy even a moment’s fear that I’ll see that again? If you are hurt, you will get help. If you are sick, you will get help. These people— _our_ people—are not your enemies, and you do not have to hide weakness from them for fear they’ll strike. Worry less about whether or not I trust you not to betray me and more about whether or not I trust you not to be an idiot. Because at the moment, I don’t.”  
  
This was too much for him to take in right now. He memorized the words in the hope of understanding them later. “You are yelling at me and I have a headache.”  
  
“I refuse to apologize for that. Lie down. This ship is hardly short on bedpost chains, I really will tie you up until you get some rest if that’s what I need to do.”  
  
“Please don’t,” Loki said, shifting sideways. He was lying down because he was tired and dizzy, he thought, not because Thor had said to. “Most of them are fuzzy enough to itch.”  
  
Thor’s hand strayed briefly across Loki’s brow, pushing his hair back. “Please never tell me how you know that. And now rest, or else I’ll shock you.”  
  
“That’s your solution to everything now. You just like mentioning it, you’ve become a braggart. ‘Oh, do this or I’ll shock you.’ ‘Did I mention I can make lightning come out of my fingers?’ ‘Hello, I’m Thor, king of Asgard, god of thunder and also lightning, ooh.’” He let his eyes fall closed once more. “Don’t let anyone else sit in my chair.”  
  
Thor said, "I never have before."


End file.
